New writing projects on the horizon

I have been writing daily letters to a dear friend of mine, who is away at her first year of college. Today I wrote my last letter to her telling her about my new writing project that I plan to begin tomorrow which is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, better known on the web as NaNoWriMo. So I thought I would share my ambitions with all of you as well.

I am literally days away from publishing my first novel on Amazon which will be available through the Kindle. The book is called "A Haunting at Mackinac" and it has been professionally edited so I'm hoping it fairs a little better than other books that are similarly published. But all that aside, the book is about a girl who is psychic. She is riding the wave of the "spiritualists" of the twenties when table tapping was a common parlor activity for people who wanted some excitement in their lives. However, this girl is the real deal. She can not only read other people's thoughts but she can also talk with spirits. She also tends to open up these gifts in other people around her.

When she arrives at Mackinac Island she awakens a sleeping evil spirit which begins to haunt the Island. The very fact that she is there is what triggers this to happen. But once it does, she has to figure out why it is happening and how to rid the Island of this evil entity. She makes some friends who help her along the way by doing research for her and protecting her in various ways both physically and spiritually. One of these helpers is a 100+ year-old Ojibway Medicine Man by the name of Kineekuhowa. Kineekuhowa helps her discover who the evil spirit is and gives her the means by which she can destroy it.

For Nanowrimo this year I intend to write a book that I have been wanting to write for a few years now. I got the idea while I was working at Polk. It started while I was compiling info for the city directory and I came across the name "Blackburn." I thought about what kind of fictional character someone named Blackburn would have to be and soon I had the main character for a book. Then I transported this character into an idea to write a fictional version of an incident that happened on Mackinac Island during and after the war of 1812 which was fought, in part, on the Island. In the years that passed since I have fleshed out the story several times and now it is fully realized inside my head and awaiting the time it will take to write it down. So now is my opportunity! Starting tonight at Midnight, I will be writing it!

Kineekuhowa is a minor character in this book too. During the War of 1812 legend has it that Kineekuhowa's mother went into premature labor giving birth to him in the same hour that the redcoats took the fort on the Island. In fact this is not so. Kineekuhowa was a boy of about ten years of age when the fort was taken. He had been sent down to the town with a message by his father who was a soldier at the fort, a tracker by the name of Gitchi Mug-wa, or Great Bear. The message was that the Ojibwa people needed to leave the Island at once, because the red coats were battering the bluffs. All the Native American people's got in their canoes and went to the mainland. It wasn't long before the American soldiers joined them.

I am nearly finished with a book called "Tessa's Travels" (for more about this book see my Blog of the same name, linked to the right). In this book, Tessa meets up with the descendants of Kineekuhowa who adopt her into their tribe. When they tell her about Kineekuhowa it is because the Windigo (evil spirit) who is after Tessa in this book is also expected of killing Kineekuhowa in the early sixties. It is said that Kineekuhowa died the same week as John F. Kennedy, and that he died under unusual circumstances. He did not die of natural causes like a man of 150 years probably should. It is said that he might have had the blood of the Bird People in him. I will talk more about the Bird People later as I develop these two stories.

So for a Character that started out in my first novel as a minor after-thought, Kineekuhowa has developed into a full-fledged icon of my writing. I would love for someone to come up with a drawing of Kineekuhowa for the release of my novel. He is about 112 years old when this story takes place, and he is described as looking a lot like the actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman who played Ten Bears in Dances with Wolves. He has white hair that is braided in a thin braid that hangs down the middle of his back past his waist and is tied with a piece of leather. In the book his great-grandson makes him a medicine headdress out of a carved piece of a hollow log worn as a crown and has embedded dear antlers. To announce his coming he sends Alina a Mandala made with a rabbit skin, and decorated with Buffalo wool and bird feathers. These are all elements I would like on my cover art.

I will try working something up on Paintshop Pro. I am told that cover art is very important for book sales.

I'll write more on my progress toward this goal later. Meanwhile I have one novel that I want to try to finish as best I can tonight before Midnight and then after midnight a new novel!

I got my work cut out for me!

Cindy K.-K.

My new Writing Career!

See this quilt? I won first place in the 2011 Patchwork in the Pines quilt show, for best group quilt!

In other news, my arm is now healed properly, this time. I finished hand therapy yesterday and I accomplished all my goals. And now I am looking forward to yet another Nanowrimo coming up in just 13 days! I want to be finished with my novel entitled "Tessa's Travels" by then so I can set aside the second draft for proofing and editing at a later date, so I can write a novel that has been in my mind for many many years, a novel about the war of 1812 called "Blackburn."

That, in a nutshell, has been my life for this past year.

Oh yeah, there is one other tiny thing.

I am giving up quilting as an obsession! Quilting is going to be downgraded to a hobby only and not one that takes up so much space in my thoughts, my life, and my house. I have changed the desk that I used to quilt on for my computer desk, I am sitting at it right now, in fact. My sewing machine is now only an occasional visitor on the scene. I take it to Interquilten on Tuesday afternoons for open sew and do most of my sewing there. Puts a limit on how much I can actually get accomplished. I still relax in front of the TV at night with hand work, that's something that will always happen though. It's part of having a hobby!

My profession is now writing and as such, I invite all of you to be part of my journey. I will be trying for a greater on-line presence in the near future so . . . tell your friends!!

I am short days away from publishing my novel entitled "A Haunting at Mackinac" on Amazon for the Kindle. I am hoping for some publicity for that work of fiction on their site. But I know for sure that I have several friends who will buy it as well. I need to do some cover art for it. Anyone know anything about that who can help? I would appreciate a shout out. Otherwise I may just end up with a stylized photo of the Grand Hotel, which features prominently in the book.

Well, at least, while striving for a greater on-line presence, I will be Blogging more often.

Thanks for reading,
Cindy K.-K.

Sadly Missing A.J.

My local Family Video film expert, A.J. (see his picture to the right) has left town for a lucrative position in Cadillac Michigan. You will be missed big time my friend, but it will be a good move for you. And you can bet that whenever I find myself in Cadillac I will be looking for your truck!

Nanowrimo is happening again. Beginning tonight at midnight. I just opened a Blog for my main character. This will double as the beginning of my book. I'm having fun with this. My characters usually take on a life of their own, but rarely do they start that way. Tessa Gates is a fully grown character with a life of her own already. More on that later. Her Blog address is now in the links file on the right.

As a protest against the removal of my dear friend A.J. I have joined Netflix. I've been thinking about it for a long time now but when I heard A.J. was leaving I decided to look more closely. It's the best thing I've done. I still have access to new movies on DVD sent to me through the mail at the rate of about 2 per week (which is the average I was getting at FV) but also I get unlimited downloads of movies, documentaries, and films that have been on Starz. I filled my instant queue with dozens of films that I can just peruse at my leisure. My mailing queue I'm trying to limit to about 40. Which will take about 6 months to complete. But no biggy. I've been watching as many movies as I wish daily, almost too many, since I have been practically living in my arm chair over the past few weeks since I got it.

I managed to watch several documentaries that have been featured at our film festival over the past few years including "The Cove" about the systematic destruction of Dolphins in one place in Japan and how stupid it is, because it's not done for any real reason. Their meat is too high in Mercury to be eaten safely, they do not harm the environment or the food source of humans, and this practice promotes the industry that makes Dolphins into captive entertainers.


Another Doc I watched was an inspirational doc called "Paperclips". A group of Middle School children, started this project with the help of their teacher/mentors to help them understand diversity in a rural Appalachian Tennessee town. They couldn't understand what the Nazi's had done because they couldn't imagine what six million was. So they began to collect paper clips. There was a social reason why they chose paperclips that was significant to the time and peoples of Europe. The children did Internet research concerning this. They began a letter writing campaign asking for paperclips and eventually the project grew and expanded exponentially. After Four years of this project they had collected more than 28 million paperclips. This project put these small town kids in contact with the greater world and taught them to treat others the way they would want to be treated. The end of the project is a German cattle car that was purchased for them by people who believed in their project and they refurbished this car to house their paperclips. It has become a physical monument to the lives lost in concentration camps during the forties. They decided to include Eleven million paperclips to commemorate all the lives lost, not just the Jews, but the Gypsies, the Homosexuals, the Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses, and political prisoners who all died in the camps at that time. A must see for a good cry!

Someone in line at the film festival last year thought that the best film they had seen this year was a Doc called, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" which is about Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in the sixties, which proved in essence that every president of the United States, as a pre-requisite for the job, it seems, is a liar! This documentary shows conclusively that beginning with Harry Truman and continuing on through to the leaders at the time, lies that had been told to the American Public by their elected leaders. The pentagon papers are the reason we no longer trust our government and also the reason we assume our leaders are all keeping things from us.

All of these films are worthy of being seen, but I'd also like to tell you about a few other films that are more entertaining.

If you have a chance, pick up "Departures" a film from Japan. "Castaway on the Moon" a Korean film that is not on DVD as yet, but soon will be (I hope) and "Kontrol" an Eastern European film about a man who feels his life is at a dead end, but eventually finds reason to live in the struggle between good and evil, this allegorical film is a must see in my book and is available on Netflix for a download.

Have fun and go see a good film this week, OK?

Cindy K-K haunting in her arm chair crocheting a new afghan.

TC Film Festival

Here is the outdoor "theater" in the Traverse City open space, right next to the water. It's THEE best single place to watch a movie, and I spent three nights there last week, watching great films like Twister, Help, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We do a little bit of tailgating before the film and the following is Sharon's genius idea on how to keep popcorn fresh and tasty!



As you can see I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, I also saw plenty of indoor films as well, and still have two more to go to tonight yet.

My favorite one so far is a very low budget film made by some film students in Austin Texas called, "The Happy Poet". Ask me sometime what the poem in the film is about. It's called Chasm, and is one of the funniest moments in a very very funny film. When the library gets it in be sure to go check it out! I'm praying nightly that it finds a distributor, because it's truly great. It's about a guy who has a lot of bills who thinks it might be a good idea to open a hotdog stand that only sells health food. He sells vegetarian food and at first people don't get it but then it starts to catch on. He runs into problems because he doesn't really know anything about business and eventually he finds he has to "sell out" and start serving hotdogs because they are cheap and he can't afford anything else. It ends well though. I love a happy ending where the main character is an English major! It gives me hope!

I also attended a film school session on Screenwriting, and got some helpful pointers about how to re-write my screenplay. Do you know that every time another person becomes interested in your screenplay you get more money? They hire you to do a re-write of your original, tweaking it here and there. Sometimes they even ask you to do something to it that you approve of! But each time it goes to a new producer, director, studio, gets sold, or traded or researched, you get to talk with someone new and re-write the whole thing, for more money. Of course the object that all screenwriters go for is to get their plays produced, but a writer can make a living just re-writing their old scripts endlessly. I was so excited just listening to this man speak, that I wanted to go home right away and start re-writing my screenplay. His name is Jim Bernstein, and he wrote the script for "Renaissance Man" staring Danny DeVito.

He told some great stories about his experiences on the set with Penny Marshall. He also gave a lot of great advice on Story, Character, Theme, Dialog and action. He showed film clips that demonstrated examples of all these things, incorporating how you need to end the first act to drive into the second and how to end the second act with the character not really knowing what he is going to do, and how he has to figure it out on the screen in front of the audience.

The example he showed for this was the scene in Rocky where he goes to the arena the night before the fight and the promoter tells him that he's going to give everyone a heck of a show. He is devastated and goes back to Adrienne and tells her that he can't win. He doesn't know what to do, so we watch him figure it out, and he says the great line about how if he gets to that final bell and he's still standing he'll know for the first time in his life that he's not just another bum from the neighborhood.

Jim said that if we can learn how to do that, we will be successful screenwriters.

I'm really glad I went to that class on the first day, because I still had the entire week to keep asking the major questions he taught us about. The question, "What does this character want?" Because every script in the universe can be boiled down to this sequence. Someone wants something really bad, and he is having trouble getting it, and in the end he either does get it, or he doesn't. That's it! So I went to all the films thinking, "OK, what does this guy want?"

The Happy Poet--The main character wanted to make money by selling health food from a hotdog cart.

Solitary Man--The Micheal Douglas Character wanted to deny the fact that he was dying any way he could, and ended up destroying his whole life.

A Brand New Life--The Little girl wanted to be loved by her parents and to stop losing the people that she loved.

The infidel--Man finds out he is adopted, and his birth father is a different religion than he was brought up. He wants to know who he is, and to see his birth father.

Me and Orson Welles--Young man (Zak Ephrem) wants to live the life of an actor in the Mercury Theater under the tutelage of the great Welles.

The Concert--Former Director of the Bolshoi orchestra wants to heal himself of a past failure by stealing an opportunity to perform again in Paris.

I'll tell you about the other films I saw some other time. Like I said, I still have two more to see and I also saw two documentaries. Not very dangerous ones though. One, called "His and Hers", was about women in Ireland and their thoughts about the most important men in their lives, their fathers, their husbands, and their sons. This is a doc that is going to stick with me for many years.

The other one I saw was called "Reel Injun" and it depicted the roll of Native Americans in film. How white people in red face portrayed Indians in the early days of film and how Dances with Wolves changed all that. I'm not doing the topic justice here because there were so many good points made about how now Indians are beginning to make films from the inside. Whereas Dances with Wolves, and the Last of the Mohicans were told from the white POV, now more and more Indian film makers are starting to make movies from their own insider POV. They profiled one film which I am going to look up while I'm here at the library. And I will report on that later.

So for now, it's still me Haunting Dubiously in the Film Festival!
Cindy K-K

Another Mola!

Many of you know that I love Molas. I believe they are the most beautiful form of needle art that exists and one that coincidentally I have never tried. A friend of mine, Nancy Crow brought this one in for me to see.

And what's great is that this tag was with it that tells a bit about Molas and where they come from.

Here is a detail of this wonderful piece of art. Notice the tiny little dots of color that are appliqued on top of the background, and also the decorative stitching and the little tiny zig zags that are reverse appliqued. This is a magnificent example.

Aside from this I also wanted to let my faithful readers to know that even though I don't post as often as I should (and this trend is bound to continue for the future), I will not be gone for long.

The film festival is coming up and I am sure that I won't be able to keep myself from sharing my opinions on the films I have tickets for. I went and bought 11 tickets mostly to Independent movies across the world, but I also have a couple of documentaries on my agenda.

Speaking of which, HBO has been showing a very dangerous doc called "Gasland" which is also being shown at our film festival. I sat down and watched it last night and it got my blood boiling. I want to write my congressmen now to make sure he knows that I want him to always oppose deregulation in any form. It has become fairly clear to me that anytime someone is striving to rid themselves of regulations it's because they think they can make more money without those checks and balances and usually end up hurting people in the process. It also made me want to check out alternative ways of heating my house in the winter. Definitely I'm going to get rid of the "clean burning" Natural Gas! I know better! That phrase definitely smacks of advertising propaganda!

I have also plotted another book in my mind. This is not a great habit to be in. I spend a lot of brain time on this and I can't possibly keep up with it in reality and get all these ideas down on paper.

I do have progress to report on this front. I finished the Nick and Sarah novel, the working title of it has been changed to "Crossroads" which is the name of the quilt pattern that Sarah and Katie use to make Nick's quilt. It's also very descriptive of both Sarah and Nick's lives. They are both at crossroads in their own lives.

The book has been sent to my dear friend Clover McKinley who is editing it. She's a professional editor at Village Press and I'm feeling very fortunate to have her. She's going to get a really nice acknowledgement in the front of my book!!!! LOL! I need to keep making statements like that to remind myself that publication is a forgone conclusion. Someday someone is going to see that I'm a prolific writer and they will want to make money off my writing and at that point, I too will start making money off it and be encouraged to quit all my other money grubbing pursuits in favor of sitting in front of this computer all day!

So those of you who actually talk to God on a regular basis, maybe you could put in a good word for this lofty goal of mine in passing! I would certainly appreciate it.

That's it for now. I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer, and are doing the things you all love as well.

Haunting the Festivals,
Cindy K-K

Is anyone wondering about my writing career?

Besides me that is?

I have once again put my writing career on hold while I got a paying job. This sucks because I now have things that I could try to sell.

So here is an update and a challenge!

Every year at the time of the Oscars I say one thing, it's now kind of a tradition. My family makes Oscar night into a real event. We get dressed up, (I have a t-shirt that says "Vera Wang" on it, so I can honestly say I am wearing Vera Wang! LOL!) I make pulled pork sandwiches because Joan Crawford once said that the best place to watch the Oscars was in bed with a sandwich. We log on to Oscar.com and print out the ballots, one for each of us, to use as a score card. We try to win the trivia contest on the website and we talk about the current events that we've heard about that concern the program and who may or may not win. We have had an IN lately in the Documentary category because of our local film festival. All of the films in that category except one were at our festival. We try to second guess the Academy on who will win in each category as we watch.

Which brings me to my point. (and I do have one!)

Every year I say, "Next year I won't have to print out the ballot from the website, I'll have a real one and I'll have to send it in to Price Waterhouse to be tabulated!" My family looks at me and smile indulgently.

So what is stopping me? I wrote a screenplay last year during Script Frenzy. That contest is coming up again next month. It occurs to me that I have done nothing with the first script so why am I thinking about writing another?

Meanwhile, another Nanowrimo has come and gone and I am nearly finished with the book that I wrote during that contest last November.

Not only that but I have another novel that is totally finished already and just needs to be printed out and sent. I plan to do this every time I buy a new black ink cartridge for my printer.

As you faithful blog readers know I also have several more ideas that I want to explore which I have enumerated to you all in the past. to those I need to add another that I've been working on daily whenever I am in the car during the long drives to my job and back. I have been able to discipline my mind into going directly to my story line every time I get into the car for a drive longer than 15 minutes. As a result I have plotted out in my mind a story about a girl and her werewolf! (Again I blame Sookie Stackhouse and to this I might add Bella for refusing her own werewolf.)

So, am I to just tell myself these stories endlessly and then die not having shared them?

No I say! So here comes the challenge!

I Challenge myself, before the end of this year to find myself an agent and be on my way to publication of some sort.

I will begin by writing a great query letter and sending it out to one agency. Everyday that I don't have to work I will endeavor to spend an hour on this project. I will continue to go through the entire book of agents and agencies until someone agrees to take me on.

Furthermore I am determined to finish the Nick and Sara Novel and get it to an editor. I have parts of it edited already. But it still need to have the finishing touches put on it. I will start querying it as soon as I get it done.

Since today is one of those days that I don't work, I will start right now. Before the day is through I will write the query for "A Haunting at Mackinaw" and maybe another for the screenplay, "The Ghost of Dixboro" and send them out to Agents.

There's the plan! Keep me honest you guys! I'm counting on you!
Cindy K-K

Molas~!

As most of you know, I love hand work of every kind. I came across this Mola a while ago at a yard sale. I bought it for $5. I recognized it as a piece of unique hand work. But it wasn't until I read about them at our last retreat that I began to understand the full meaning behind these intensely rich pieces of folk art. Here for your perusal is a collection of Molas shared with us at that retreat. They are made in South America, mostly in Guatemala. They are appliqued using only bright solid colored fabrics. They use both onset and inset applique or reverse applique to create the layered effects. They are often embellished with embroidery stitch, mostly the stem stitch or the back stitch, but also the seed stitch and the running stitch is used frequently. Embroidery is used to clearly define the facial features and other details such as teeth, claws, beaks, eyes, etc. This one is the same pattern as above, possibly depicting a llama or horse. You can see the difference in workmanship between the two. It is possible that the second one is unfinished or possibly done as by a younger girl practicing her stitches.
A lizard? Because of the colorful scales and the shape of the claws? this piece is unfinished because of the lack of background features.
This is a very finely made specimen, and depicts many different beasts, often with human looking appendages suggesting possibly that they are depictions of mythological creatures or creatures that have a specific divine quality.
Mostly they depict birds and animals but this one very unique orange and green piece has human figures pictured in. The humans seem to be dressed in their Sunday best, women in fluffy dresses and men wearing big hats! And they seem to be dancing!
Once the main figure has been stitched in, slits are made in the background fabric and colorful patches are layered underneath. The slits are then turned back and stitched into place making these horizontal and vertical lines in the background. This is what makes it a Mola. In this depiction of the birds, the background is filled in with spirals. Every inch of the picture is covered with stitching on the finest Molas.
I'm certain that if I were more familiar with South American birds I would probably be able to identify these just by their depiction alone.

This one seems atypical because it doesn't seem to depict a central figure, but just a geometric pattern. But again, it's considered a Mola because if it's use of every inch of space stitched into place.

My Haunts since New Years!

Hey look what got finished on New Years Day at about 8 pm! This project took twenty years in the making, but now it is off the list! I'm doing well on the new blog. I haven't let a single day go by without finishing something. Sometimes it's a block, sometimes it's a twenty year old Hand Pieced and quilted quilt! Yeah!

New Years eve we went downtown to the State theater and watched Grease with some friends. the movie got out at 11:45 pm and we walked outside to the dropping of the cherry! It was fun to be in that crowd. I was kind of glad we had been in the theater because we were all warm. Of course when we got out to the crowd there were so many people there that we didn't get cold at all! It was fun!

Take a look at the other Blog (link to the right) to see what I've been doing.

In other news, we are now in the process of packing up the old store to move into the new one. I just cleaned out the store room and got the front counter cleaned out and packed up, but it beat the heck out of me. Moving is very hard work. So if any of you readers out there want to do a good deed, we could use some help moving things tomorrow, Monday! If you ask nicely she might give you a discount on something if you help. Worth a shot!

We will be open again later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday, at the new store. It's very neat in there. Lots more storage and bigger area saved for classes. We will still be carrying Miche Bags, and we will be introducing several new lines of Yarn. So come in and take a look.

I'm working on Freemo today so I'll report later on stuff that I get done today. There is also a little matter of Eurorails with our friends, Vic and Sharon.

Talk with you soon,
Cindy K-K
Happily Haunting in Interlochen!

New Blog! Check it out.

OK, so this is why I have that CHAO syndrome (Can't have anyone over). My living room is overcrowded with projects. So I've decided that I'm going to put an end to it. I have to get this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt finished by a week from yesterday. I signed a contract! Yes, I did! so that's the plan. forget the fact that I broke my thumb nail a week ago and have been waiting for it to heal and grow out before doing any quilting on it. But I do need to get it finished. This other picture:
yeah, this one, is the other side of the room and this whole pile is unfinished projects. It will all be gone if I can finish these projects. Boy that would be nice! Mostly in that pile is about a dozen bags worth of plarn in various colors. Check out previous posts to find the definition of plarn!

As I finish each project I am blogging about it on my new blog. check out the links section of the side bar for the link to my new blog. I am going to try to finish one project every day for a whole year. My friend's think I'm nuts, but they don't realize what kinds of things I have in this house. There are lots of things that I can finish in one day if I work on them diligently. There are other things that I can break down into one day segments and finish one whole section of them in one day. Other things I will have to work on for several hours and then finish them some other time. But I think I have enough to cover a whole year. I have an open ended list. It's going to be interesting.

On other fronts: We are planning a nice New Years Eve with friends, Vic and Sharon. We are planning on seeing the movie Grease at the State and then staying to watch the cherry drop! Sounded like fun so that's our big plans, we will see what happens. I'll post on Sunday after the event.

Tawni is in the throws of planning for her big move. Interquilten is moving across the street into a nice building that is bigger than the space we have now. I think it's going to be a very good move, the new building has more room and is a much nicer space, more character and more personality than the generic place we are in right now. Moving day is the 12th of January and we will probably be re-opened on the 14th in the new space.

Meanwhile, Jeff switched us from Showtime (after the series "Dexter" was over), and now we have HBO and Cinemax. It's amazing, we've been watching movies every night with this package but only watched Dexter with the last one. We are also catching up on the new seasons of True Blood and Big Love. Very Dramatic! My whole family loves True Blood, we laughed we cried, we cringed while watching the beginning credits! Yeah pretty gross. But I highly recommend it! It's like Twilight for adults!

OK, OK, so I haven't been walking. But hey, it's winter, and I'm on Coumadin which thins the blood and I'm having a really hard time staying warm. Or maybe it's because this is the first year I've had to endure the cold in my new body weight. At any rate I think a good morning walk would help me sweat and warm up. I just wish there was room in my living room for the treadmill. Look at those pictures again. No there really isn't.

Ok, I'll talk with you all later,
Cindy K-K
Haunting at home for now.

Merry Christmas!

Guess what I've been doing? Good guess! Making Christmas gifts! I am picturing none of them, after all, those of you who are getting them wouldn't be surprised if you saw them on my Blog! Well, my mother might not and she got several of them.

Anyway, I'm also doing some of those "Plarn" bags. I've been making plarn for days, the plastic bags creating havoc in my living room. This is by far the weirdest project I've ever done. Making Plarn! I spent two full days just sorting plastic bags and cutting them into one inch strips. Then off and on I've been making them into plarn. For a very good tutorial on how to do this go to this website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTm2V4ssvY





So these are three of the bags I've finished this week. I seem to be able to acquire an over abundance of white bags with various colored print. Mostly with green print (Oleson's, Tom's, and Family Video) and Red print (Thank you bags given out nearly everywhere.) In order to get the white bag I sorted the strips after they were cut and put all the white ones with no printing on it into a separate container. Then as I made the plarn for this if I ran into any that had even a small amount of printing I put it into a different container so that I could keep the plarn for this project pristine. What I didn't realize though was the difference in the various bags. Even white areas of the bags are subtly colored by the dying process which can easily be seen in the subtle variations of this bag. But still it's pretty unique. I have been telling my bag gatherers (and you know who you are) that I have enough white bags for now and only want them to save me their colored bags. I use them for the stripe around the top as in the green and red bags pictured. I have several blue ones, and now that Walmart in TC is a Super Walmart I will probably be getting more groceries there and getting more white bags with the blue print. And Best buy where Jeff buys some of his computer equipment gives out blue bags. One more project on the horizon!

But all this aside. I have to get back to my applique projects. I plan to do that tomorrow. I have three blocks that need to get done for the Guild Applique project, and then I also have one block that needs to get done before Saturday for the Shop Applique BOM. So I'm working on that this week.



Also, I have a major deadline coming up. I signed a contract stating that I would get my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt done by no later than the January guild meeting. I'm doing fairly well accomplishing that. I worked on it all day Friday and here are two pictures of my progress. I have only two scallops to finish to have the edges all sewn. It's painstaking work in which I have to turn under the top and backing one quarter of an inch and then blind stitch it closed by hand. Then when it's finished I must go back and quilt the final border of white hexagons also by hand. The entire project was done entirely by hand. I hand pieced the blocks and put them together also by hand. The guild helped me hand quilt the top around each and every hexagon, and now I'm nearly finished. It's been a labor of love. Special thanks goes out to Eleanor Howard for helping with the hand quilting so very many sessions we spent on this project, and also for keeping me going on it with her good natured ribbing. She will be nearly as proud to see this project done as I will!

I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas and may the joy of the holiday season be in your hearts.

Haunting in the spirit of the holiday,
Cindy K-K

In the Midst of NaNoWriMo

Hey everyone,

National Novel Writing Month has been keeping me very busy and very tired! Gosh it seems that the only time I have to write these days is from midnight until about 3 or 4 AM. But in the first two weeks I managed to get at least 78,000 words written on my Novel about Sarah and Nick called "Through Her Eyes". It seems strange but this month every one of my classes are going, the one month out of the year that I wish they hadn't. It would have freed up a lot more of my time to write if there had been little interest. I don't complain though. I just take this as a sign that God wants me to get out there and teach classes and make some extra money for Christmas. I'm sure He'll give me time off later on to finish the novel.

Also Rumpled Quilts Kin had their semi-annual fall retreat this past weekend. I worked on four or five different projects, got one top completed

and made huge progress on another one.

I'm now within two viewings of Pride and Prejudice of finishing my Kitty Cat I Spy quilt top. I have finished a bunch of Halloween projects but I have a few more I want to do. The goal I have in mind is to get the Halloween fabric stash down to a bare minimum so that I can fit it all into one box. It's not there yet.



I posted this photo of the project called Dancing with bats before, but now I have the companion piece for it done called Haunted Hill.

I also made this trip-tiche of Halloween goodies. this is called a split quilt technique.

Here too is a closeup of my Kitty Cat I Spy. I'll post more photos of these later as I get the quilt closer to finished.



This fine fellow is a project I'm working on for Interquilten. I got the branch couched on this weekend at retreat. I used a new thread that we are going to get in called Invisa-Fil. It's a new type of invisible thread that has enough body and pliability to be easy to work with but at the same time is fine and invisible. It worked great for couching. I used Pearl Cotton #5 in various colors of brown for the branches. Now all I have to do is fuse on the leaves and berries and well, you know, layer and quilt. It will be done and in the shop by sometime in December, I'm sure!!!

So it's turned out to be a very busy month. I am trying to get a few things done for a craft show coming up on December 3rd at Munson Hospital. Come down to the basement that day to find some interesting gifts for Christmas.

Last month Jeff updated our cable and we now have Showtime, so as a result I've been seeing my friends at Family Video a lot less lately. But I did manage to get over there yesterday to pick up the latest new releases. If you haven't seen the new Star Trek movie it's very well worth seeing, and not only to see the mean guy Sylar from Heroes depicting the much loved Vulcan, Mr. Spock. It's highly entertaining. I also got a good romantic Comedy called "The Ugly Truth." Turns out the truth isn't as ugly as all that. And the highly acclaimed depiction of the book by Jodi Picoult, "My Sister's Keeper." Don't try watching this one unless you have enough time for a good cry.

Have any of you read about the latest ideas that Michael Moore has been sending out? He wrote an article for the Record Eagle with a plan to get Traverse City out of this recession. It's worth a drive to the Library to look it up. It got sent to me this week because I'm a friend of the Film Festival.

Other than Haunting on my lap top and in Lake Ann this weekend I'm pretty much engulfed in the lives of Sarah and Nick. So stay tuned!

Yours Truly,
Cindy K-K
The Haunter

Another great Road Trip!

I've been Haunting all over the state!

Suzy and I went on another road trip. Last Tuesday we hit the road and made it all the way down to Lake Orion and the quilt shop called Canterbury Village. I spent way too much, (don't tell Jeff) but the thing is this is going to be the last one this year and probably way until next summer. I'll need all that time to get the balance on my credit card down. LOL! Anyway, they were having a quilt show at the gift shop next door to the quilt shop and I took a few pictures. This one I'm going to copy.

I recently got my Halloween fabric stash out and started going through it. I now have about six more Halloween quilts planned. So it was serendipitous that I was able to see the interesting Halloween quilts at this shop.

So then there was this quilt too, which Suzy and I stared at for a long long time. So interesting. I took some close up detailed pics of it.
You can imagine, I'm going to be collecting blocks for my own version of this one. It's so detailed and unique.

And I love the little mermaids and fat ladies in bathing suits! So much fun!

But other than the Halloween projects that I won't be finished with before Halloween, I have a lot of other sewing to do. I have bags to make for the craft show at Munson, I have Christmas gifts to finish, and I have store samples to make. I know I'll have time to do most of this, but then again. Nanowrimo is starting Sunday! SUNDAY!! Yikes!

So my Sewing area looks like a horrifying industrial explosion of a fabric factory and all I really want to do is sit at my computer which is facing the window looking out onto my Japanese Garden and forget about everything that is going on behind me in the rest of the house. LOL!

So here is the view I face when I am sitting at the computer.

Nice Huh?

In other news: Jeff finally updated our cable. We have been enjoying Showtime for a week now, and we're totally caught up on the Dexter episodes. Are there any other Dexter Fans out there reading this? Love it!

Anyway, I will be catching up on the On-Demand movies for a while. That's why I haven't been at Family Video lately. Sorry A.J.! I'll am always trying to find good movies to tell all of you about. Maybe this time I should tell you about my all time favorites. Three words, Dickens, Austin, and Bronte. Yeah I know, those are authors not film makers. But I love the films made from the books that these three authors wrote. My favorite story of all time is Jane Eyre. I've seen every version of this film made. Likewise I will watch any film made from a Dickens book. My favorite one of those is Little Dorrit. I've been watching the BBC version of this book nearly daily.


The point is, the films made from these three authors seem to be ones that I watch again and again and again. Amazing!

OK, That's all I have for now. More about the finished projects later.

Cindy
The Haunter

Nanowrimo Coming soon!

Yes, Wow, it's almost November which is National Novel Writing Month. You who know me also know that I won this contest of will power last year and you know also that I will be participating again this year! My dilemma is this: Do I go ahead with a fresh new project (say the one based on the Border Babes?) or do I finish the great story of Nick and Sarah that I started last year? I don't know if it matters much to the people at the Nanowrimo site. They are more interested in keeping people writing and in a state of frantic creativity. I don't think anyone would even notice what I was writing as long as my total word count kept going up and up.

What I want to avoid at all costs is having writing UFO's. Oh come on, you quilters out there know what I mean. We have lists of projects,from every aspect of our experience all waiting to be finished. I hate to think how many UFO's I have now that I'm working at the quilt shop. It seems every week I come home with new projects. I will have to make new lists before January. I say lists because I do so many different things. I don't just make quilts and sew, I also do cross stitch, needlepoint, basketry, knit and crochet, scrapbook, and other more creative artistic things like watercolors, drawings, pastels, found object art, and altered books. I do not limit myself in the line of being creative. And I probably have UFO's (Unfinished Objects) in all of these areas.

But so far I have managed to avoid having a list of writing UFO's. I have a list of writing projects that I've wanted to do but haven't begun yet. Here they are:

1. The story of Patty the quilter who belongs to a group of quilters who meet at bookstore. Patty, in a desperate state of mind hurts herself and is hospitalized on suicide watch. Her friends from the bookstore quilting group come up to keep her company and to help with the suicide watch, they tell her their life stories one by one and through the sharing of these woman Patty finds new purpose in her own life.

2. An Historical Novel, begins in 1810 about a young man who may be half Native American, named Samuel Blackburn. He is jilted by the girl he is in love with and joins the Pennsylvania Militia to escape his past. His troop is sent to the furthest and wildest outreaches of civilization at that time, Northern Michigan and there is present for the attack on Fort Michilimackinac located on Mackinaw Island. There he meets the beloved of his commanding officer the beautiful Sophia Biddle, who has the heart of every man who meets her, including his. Nearly eclipsed by her beauty is her younger cousin Anne Biddle who is still somehow able to attract our hero's attentions and they form a friendship. The novel spans the war years of 1812 through 1814 and paints a picture of how the soldiers from both sides deal with the Native Americans in the area. Some fall in love and marry the beautiful Indian Women and others ignore and exploit them. Still others cannot cope with the societal morays that inhibit their more noble instincts and suffer because of it. It's a story about bigotry and love in the earliest years of our history.

3. And I'm not sure I even want to do this one, but someone told me recently that the struggles I went through last year with my health would make for an interesting book. I am thinking that it would have to be a comedy up-playing the two days I spent with a tube in my throat and could only communicate through written notes. I still have the notebook I was writing in and most of it is pretty funny, I was under the influence. Of course there is also the story of the balloon that I told at Karen Hill's memorial service. And the story about how I saw the ghost cat in my house while I was still on those same pain meds. I still say that just because I was on the pain meds doesn't mean Karen and my dead cat were not actually there!

4. And finally, I had an idea a while ago for a book about a girl growing up in a desert scrub area during the times of the early Roman Empire. She is often put in charge of her younger brother and cousins and once in a while they get away from her and she has to try to find them. One time she finds them playing near a camp of men and women who are nomads, a religious order of sorts, and the leader of the group plays with the young children and laughs at their antics. She falls in love with this young man even though she is not more than 12 and he is in his late twenties. She says she will someday marry this man, a carpenter by trade. Years pass and she is now a young girl of 16. She has never forgotten this young man and once again she sees him as he travels into Jerusalem for the Sabbath. She is so excited to see him and shouts to him. But he doesn't see her because there is a crowd of people who are also there to welcome him in. She then finds out who he is and why they are all welcoming him. Several days later she is walking along the road and sees a procession. Here is her young man, he has been beaten bloody and is condemned to death. He is struggling to carry a wooden crossbeam up a hill. He falls and she runs out to him to wipe the sweat and blood from his face with her vale. He mutters a blessing onto her. She witnesses his death unbeknownst to her family who would not have approved of their young virginal daughter seeing such a sight. Afterward she goes back to her life and then several years later she hears about a preacher who knew this rabbi. She goes to one of their meetings and hears the stories. Afterward she approaches the man and tells him her own story of how she saw this man when she was a child and how she would have done anything to make him laugh, his joy and laughter were infectious. She becomes a part of the earliest ministry and traveled with the apostle Paul for a time. She takes the name of Thecla, not the name she had been born with, to disguise her identity and hide from her parents who would not approve of her vocation. She becomes one of the first female martyrs of the Christian faith.

There are other ideas on the horizon as well, I'm sure of that. I used to write down all of my dreams and ideas. I haven't done that for a while because of the backlog of usable ideas I already have.

So what do you think? I have come up with a readers poll for all of you to vote and tell me which of these projects I should develop next. Let me know your thoughts, please. You may either post an answer to this article, or at the very least go to the poll and vote for the one you would most like to read. I'll be looking forward to reading your responses.

In other news: I was able to get a couple of things done. This is going to be a class at Interquilten next month. It's a bow tie wreath. For the idea I must thank my dear friend Sharyn Woerz. It was relatively easy to do. It takes 1/2 yard of two different fabrics, about 10 yards of ribbon and a wire wreath form available at Micheal's or any other craft store that carries floral supplies. I also added a big bow to dress it up a bit. I was thinking about stringing some beads through it as well. After all, you know my motto, "Gorp it to the max!"

I apologize for missing last weeks post. But I couldn't find a movie worthy to review and suddenly the weekend got very busy, plus there was a problem with a badge on POGO.com. Do any of you POGO? It's fun and exciting. Both of my men spend money on on-line gaming. They play Civ, and Warcraft, and I know not what all. So I feel justified in the $25 a year I spend to play POGO. They have a variety of on-line games and they keep you interested by giving you two or three challenges every week. You can also use game tokens won in the games to buy outfits and goodies for your pogo mini character. It's fun. You can go there to play the free games which include several fun ones including some types of solitaire card games and others. A special offer, the first three people who e-mail me with the words "pogo request" in the subject line, I will give you a free weekend pass to club pogo so you can try out the paid games.

So about the films. I've seen about fifteen films over the past two weeks and the only ones that have stuck in my mind are the following:

"The Proposal", with Sandra Bullock as a Canadian about to be deported. She makes a last ditch effort to stay at her high status job by telling her employers that she and her male assistant are in love and about to be married. I love Sandra Bullock and she doesn't disappoint in this wonderful romp in a far away Alaskan retreat. The addition of Betty White in this film makes it a real treat. Those two alone could make the worst written script funny.

"Factory Girl", a look into the twisted bizarre world of Andy Warhol's factory. No one very recognizable is in this film but that is good because it would just detract from the flavor of it. Edie, the "poor little" abused "rich girl" in this film whom Warhol later claimed he was in love with, gets sucked into the factory world of Warhol's playthings. She appears in a couple of his films but when his influences on her start taking hold in the form of drug abuse and jealousy when she has an affair with a thinly disguised Bob Dylan, Warhol turns on her and meanly betrays her. It's an interesting portrait of that time.

And saving the best for last, "The Jane Austin Book Club", is about a group of woman who come together over their love of the novels written by Jane Austin and the men and other women in their lives. If you can see Jane Austin as a prophet for our times or the writer of rule books for women and men, then you will love this film as much as I did. Of course there is one scene in the book that puts it all into perspective for those who aren't "getting it!" The young lesbian character is having a relationship with a writer who is using her for story ideas. In one tumultuous scene This character finds a rejection letter from a publisher saying that the story ideas are mean spirited, obvious and implausible. The story called, "Separating Eggs for Flan" is an obvious symbol of her parents divorce. If it weren't for this one scene, I think many people wouldn't get the whole premise of the film as an allegory. I studied literature in college and I thought this scene a little heavy handed until my husband watched it and said, "Oh, I get it, they aren't talking about the books at all, their just all talking about their own lives." Well, DUH! LOL! My one comment is this, I wish the playwright had chosen a different Sci-Fi author. I could tell that she (or he) had read a lot of Austin but I seriously wondered if she (or he)(no on second thought, she) had read any LeGuin at all. There was nothing whatsoever about LeGuin's artistic renderings of her alternative universe or her own wonderful and inspiring allegories. The only thing that was said about Leguin's books were, they were good! Well, Double DUH!

Oh and one last thing. I know several of you are as anxiously awaiting the November release of "New Moon" as I am. I hope the hype is not getting to you. The first movie "Twilight" could not live up to the hype and I'm certain that "New Moon" will likewise not. I really liked "Twilight", despite what 90% of my young friends thought. My friend Katie Vreeland doesn't even abide the mentioning of this film in her presence any more, so sick of it she is. But seeing this movie got me to read the four book series by Stephanie Meyer. It is universally acknowledged that the book is always (with few exceptions) better than the movie. I love movies though, I love them almost as much as I love books, and when I have huge amounts of spare time I will pick up a book, or at least listen to one on CD or tape. But when I don't have much time, and I want a little "Austin" as they say in the film, I will slide in a DVD and watch a movie based on the book that I love. That's how I feel about the "Twilight" series.

BTW, if you liked "Twilight", and have yet to read any of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, Family video has the first season of "True Blood" out on DVD. Definitely not for young children, plenty of bad language and graphic sex and marvelous blood sucking vampire scenes! Go for it!

OK, more about projects next week. I just had to get all that out of my system!

Haunting in the Video Store!
Cindy K-K
The Haunter

Haunting in Marquette

I was haunting in Marquette last week folks! My mother lives up there on Ohio Street which is at the very top of a very large hill. So you would think that walking in Marquette would be a downhill proposition. But not so! Yes, one does have to come back, but it seems that I nearly always want to go someplace else that is at the top of another hill.

I first walked down Ohio street to Third street and up to the little strip mall where the quilt shop is. That was a fairly nice half mile walk. Then I decided to walk back to Mom's house and that IS uphill all the way. I was carrying a new fabric purchase too! I didn't start catching my breath until I had been in the house sitting down for at least ten minutes. Is that normal?

I didn't take any pictures on that trek even though I had the camera and I walked under this drooping tree with huge leaves and very unique trunk, on Park street. I wanted to go back and take pictures of it but never got the chance. You see I had forgotten that I took the card out of the camera. OK, so now I have a spare card behind my driver's license in my wallet in case that ever happens again.

After dinner that night Jeff and I wanted to go down to Presque Isle (pronounced Press-keel). The Island is a rocky piece of land that juts out from the North side of Marquette and has some of the most lovely scenery in the area. I wanted to go back to the big rocks but the drive was blocked off and I didn't think I could walk that far before sunset. So we went over to Sunset park on the West side of the island and walked backwards up the drive. It was windy out and the Surf was definitely up! The majority of these pictures are of that walk. We took about 50 pictures. These are the best of the bunch.






Jeff is convinced that in a few thousand years the water and wind will totally obliterate this whole Island even though it has huge outcroppings of exposed bedrock.






My Third and final walk in as many days was down 6th street to Ridge Street and up the huge hill to the Yarn shop, which is a stones throw from their Ben Franklin Store which is right next door to their Family Video store. I stopped at all three places and managed to drop another $30 on various things. No movies though for two reasons. Number one, A.J. wasn't there to advise me. And Number two, we were leaving early the next day. My mom is not much of a movie buff, although I could have rented Grand Torino for her, she would have enjoyed that one. This picture was taken on Ridge Street. I was wondering if this was an ordinance or just good advice.


These last two pictures were just things that we saw the morning we left. This poor dog in the back of the truck, we both wondered what this poor thing had done to deserve this treatment.

We stopped at the rest area in the Senney Stretch and apparently there was a nice big family of beautiful brown ground squirrels that lived in the trees nearby. They appeared like our city dwelling chipmunks but they were way bigger, smaller than a regular squirrel though. This one was serving lunch at the lunch counter and calling the rest of the family to come to the table. LOL~!

I managed to also finish a couple of projects but I'll report on those later.

It was a good trip and I'm glad I got to see my Mom before the holidays even though it's difficult for us to get up there as much as we would like. But none-the-less, I'm glad to be home.

Monday night we had a really great Guild meeting. My program was on Figuring out how to develop your own color theory. Lots of people seemed to like it.

Tuesday I thought I would change the livingroom furniture around and clean underneath things. I also wanted to set up my sewing room in the kitchen again. Working at Interquilten I really do need to have an organized sewing area. So I spent the last two days changing, cleaning, and organizing. LOL! It so needed to be done! I'll take some pictures of the new area after it's totally clean and organized and post them next week along with pictures of the projects I will be able to finish because of it!

How's that for wishful thinking!

Cindy
Back haunting in TC again!